The Old
Carrabelle Hotel opened for business with innkeepers Kathy and Skip
Frink on the 4th of July, 2002, very likely in the first
years of the building’s 3rd century!

The oldest existing photo of the Hotel, when it was The Carrabelle Hotel
date unknown)

Old county
records are sketchy on the subject, but enough word-of-mouth evidence
exists to put the original construction in the late 1800’s. It seems
that the first use of the property was as a railroad hotel, serving the
railroad line from Tallahassee that ended in a spur where the Carrabelle
Volunteer Fire Department currently stands. The old Coombs sawmill was
across the street (now Gulf State Community Bank property), preparing
cypress and other woods for transportation by rail and schooner.

Another opinion
is that it may have been home to the sawmill manager of the time. But
oral history moving forward into the 1920’s seems to agree that the Gray
family, still in Carrabelle, owned it as their home for 20 or 30 years.
The first dated family photo proof is 1938 Christmas. In the War years
when Carrabelle turned into the amphibious training base for the
Normandy invasion, most of the famous “brothel” rumors originated.
Ownership (and use) of the hotel is unclear until after the war, when it
is shown in a picture now hanging in the lobby to be the “Carrabelle
Hotel”. Skip, in the remodeling process, found evidence that there was
only one bathroom, on the ground floor. There were “three johns, side by
side with no stall partitions, 2 sinks and a bathtub. Seems it was a
very social bathroom”.

The 1950’s saw
Captain Leon Langston, Carrabelle’s original deep-sea charter captain,
make the old place his showplace family home. Years after the death of
both parents, son David sold the property to Weldon Vowell, the (self)
acclaimed Donald Trump of Carrabelle. Weldon, desiring to move his
business to Panacea, sold to Skip, Kathy and partners in May, 2001.

Kathy fell in
love in Carrabelle. “No, not with Skip, with Carrabelle. I started
coming to Carrabelle Beach in the 1960’s on family vacations. We even
went out sometimes with Captain Langston on his Queen of Queens.” Family
and careers intervened, then in the mid-90’s she visited here with Skip
and son Nathan, just for old times’ sake, staying at the Riverside Motel
(where C-Quarters Restaurant/Marina now stands). That was when Skip got
hooked (“Not on Kathy, on Carrabelle”).

Fast forward to
the 2001 Chili Cook-Off on St. George Island. The couple was invited, by
friend Rose Tortorici, to stay at a row house nearby that was chock full
of Atlanta Parrot heads. In spite of the bonhomie, Kathy chanced to get
into her favorite reading, a real estate magazine. “Look, the old hotel
is for sale!” And the rest is history.

Atlanta friends
Debbie and Will Brown came in for part of the purchase, and for a lot of
the work. “Foreman” Skip, who has years of experience in remodeling, on
Day 1 had three helpers ready to go, with paint cans and brushes.
Painting is usually the last trade hired, but in this case the foreman
was allowed no choice - it had to be first, and this led to a lot of
friendly confrontations throughout more than a year of work. (Debbie’s
painting resume includes mention of the fact that she has never cleaned
a brush or a pan, and Skip has never thrown anything away-ask Kathy).
But the friends remained friends, and on the 4th of July the
following year, the house was booked all weekend.

Exactly what
layout was original is difficult to determine, even though the work got
into moving walls and doorways, exposing the structure. But it is clear
that after the time of the “3 johns” downstairs, the west side porch on
the second floor was enclosed to form two bathrooms, men’s and women’s.
Those three bathrooms still remain, highly renovated, and serve as the
innkeepers’ on the ground floor, and Flamingo and Regatta baths on the
second floor. Baths for Hemingway and Magnolia had to be created from
scratch.

“The guys from
M&L Plumbing were great to work with”, Skip comments. “I had to do
things like raise floor levels and lay tile exactly where their bathroom
fixtures would go” to suit the installation schedule which ran for 3
weeks (every pipe was replaced from the street in, a water heater added
to run in tandem with the other, and new fixtures added). “So all the
bathrooms had tile ‘paths’: through the doorway, over to the toilet and
over to the sink. I didn’t have time to do the whole room, since they
put in all 5 bathrooms at once”. (The finished product is seamless.) To
date, not one service call.

The plumbers had
an advantage over Ronald Gray’s A/C crew, however. There was no central
heat and air when Ronald was there (summertime). The inn now enjoys
climate control running like a top, with separate heat pump units in the
attic and under the house which can be controlled separately, or shut
off if not needed. To date, not one service call.

And of course,
all trades worked around the painting. Will, a career banker, divided
his efforts between watching money disappear and helping Debbie make
paint disappear from her bucket (onto the hotel). Or doing back-breaking
yeoman landscaping labor, as time and weather permitted. There were many
times when Carrabelle Junction, Willie’s, Tiki Hut or Julia Mae’s hosted
a very tired and hungry group of four (or five, as Nathan devoted all
his year’s vacation time to work on the hotel).

Every April the azaleas attempt a takeover of the Old Carrabelle Hotel

The Old
Carrabelle Hotel can be visited at www.oldcarrabellehotel.com, which has photos of all guest rooms and public areas. Currently there are four themed upstairs bedrooms with private baths, wraparound porches
on both floors, the Monkey Bar (where Chuck Spicer can occasionally be
found holding forth – or holding onto something for support), living and
dining room guest areas and the Key West courtyard. The carriage house
(still has 5 doorways for carriages) is to be a future project. And next
door up the street, the Oyster Cabin is a rental efficiency apartment
complete with loading dock.

What now that most of the
work is done? Kathy: “Well, now we can relax. We escaped Atlanta, you
know, and all that rat race. So, Skip remodels, is active in the
Carrabelle Chamber of Commerce, is running the Riverfront Festival,
working to bring Habitat for Humanity, the Tourist Tax and the Big Bend
Scenic Byway to Franklin County and writes occasionally for local
papers. I went through real estate school and am now working the 7-day a
week spring realtor schedule, will soon start study to get my Florida
mortgage broker license…oh, and of course we run the Old Carrabelle
Hotel”.

from
The Franklin Chronicle, April 2003

2012 update:
Since our neighboring towns of Apalachicola and St. George Island have just come under the focus of a recent Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition feature, we are becoming a good choice for lodging that is a little more quiet and out-of-the-way, yet still centered in the eco-touring heart of the Forgotten Coast